Confirmation Bias
by Rae L. Road
Summary: Roxas is an arrogant film critic and Axel is a director. All Roxas wants to do is get praise for his crappy opinions and end the day with a few more enemies and the egocentric knowledge that he's right about everything. Axel, on the other hand, thinks it's hilarious.


**AN:**

AN: Trying to write a bunch of drabbles and oneshots for this month because of the much anticipated 8/13/14. This is the first of many, perhaps? If you have any prompts, send them my way.

Disclaimer: characters are mine in the sense that I made up this stupid AU and the entirety of their stupid lives. Other than that, take it away Nomura.

Warning: Maybe some baby swears? If you're a weenie, go hang at weenie hut juniors where they say crap, darn, and shoot and eat weenie foods, you weenie.

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**Confirmation Bias**

"You ever heard of being self-aware? You know, of character flaws?" Xion yelled, "Arrogance, namely?"

Yawning for no real purpose except to appreciate moments like this was what Roxas loved best about being an asshole. The whole world waited on him and his attitude when he yawned. He could feel the insult coarse through her as she realized that he was bored and/or ignoring her psychological perspective on his completely irredeemable personality. The rage rose up in her like a tsunami on a surfer, but she chose to stick to her guns and try to be patient. Roxas lived for this kind of crap.

He finished the drawn out yawn by casually scratching his nose with his middle finger, making sure to keep the other fingers from getting in the way of his painfully obvious message to the girl, "Arrogance? Never heard of it."

"Figures." She sighed, crossing her arms and leaning against the door frame that welcomed her out of Roxas's apartment, "But if you want your blog to get any more hits, you're gonna need to lighten up with your reviews."

"Um, hello," He kicked up his feet on the coffee table to dispel her professional disposition, and leaned back on the couch, satisfied with her frown, "The whole point of my damn blog is to hate."

"Whatever," She was getting seriously pissed now, and Roxas tried not to laugh, "Not all of us are sexually attracted to trashing other people's hard work."

"Very cutting, that one. What's next? A slash at my weight? Why don't you insult my hair? We could have fun with this." He made eye contact, "I like seeing you try to get me mad. Why don't you leave it to the pros, baby? You should stop before I start to cry."

"You know what," She said, her arms shaking in front of her, "Fine, have fun in your goddamn man-cave. I hope you like being alone because that's how you're gonna be forever." She slammed her hands through the air and clenched her fists on her way out, "Asshole."

"Music to my ears. Thanks for the bad omen, Xion, I'll remember this!" And the door slammed on her way out.

Roxas ran a personal blog. Personal in the sense that he took popular works of art and tore them to shit in front of an audience. He was a movie critic in the fullest sense of the word 'critic'. He was unforgiving and determined. He made popular opinion look like popular idiocy, made the public feel like the minority. Most of the movies he critiqued were only popular because of confirmation bias, so he tore down the facade and looked at the film from the bare bones, cursing it to hell in the snarkiest way he could think of. And the most confusing thing about it was that people loved it. Roxas expected to be hated, even welcomed it as he had displayed in his little charade with Xion, but he wasn't hated all the time, really. He was praised for his spite sometimes, for his uncensored anger and hatred of all things popular. Most of the time, though, people hated him. He even admitted to himself that he was being too critical and the movies usually weren't that bad. But the thing about the public was that they loved drama; and Roxas loved impressing people with his bullshit. Roxas absolutely adored being Public Idiot Number One. And he was going to keep this up no matter how many hate messages he received. But when he really got down to it, the best thing about those messages was the way they were phrased. Each one was frighteningly similar to his own writing style. The haters had been reading his work, thinking it through, and then getting mad. They were learning from him, as much as they'd hate to admit it. The sick pleasure from this fact ran deep in Roxas's veins. It was like his own personal revenge on the world and its trends.

But the last particular movie he had torn to shreds was one that he wasn't going to forget any time soon.

It was a massively hyped piece. A casual hipster movie that went with current popular trends like ketchup goes with mustard. Delicious to some, disgusting to others. Rumor had it the director was born around here, so some of the scenes were filmed in this very city, meaning Roxas had direct access to the filming locations. He went there for some of his blog photos, making rude gestures with his fingers in shameless selfies with captions like "another shitty movie in another shitty city". He was bored in a world full of critics and popular opinion. It was natural for him to dream of being either one or the other, so he settled for both. It was simply the way he was.

The movie was called _Love and Be Loved_ or something stupid like that. Frankly, he couldn't even remember. There was nothing memorable about it, nothing that struck him as beautiful or poetic that didn't also strike him as cookie-cutter cliché. So there he sat a few days after his run-in with Xion, at a park bench accidentally located in one of the filming locations of his most recent fuck-up. There he sat staring at the sun and thinking about himself. There he sat with a man snapping his fingers in front of his vacant face.

"Hey, kid, you got a brain in there or what?"

Realizing he had just been confronted by a guy in a leather jacket and pin-striped boots who looked like he'd recently gotten his hair dyed via spray can at Party City, Roxas sat up and swiped the offender's hand out of his face.

"Yeah, I've got a brain. I can feel the intelligence draining out of it just from looking at you. What do you want?"

"Whoa, didn't mean to set off the attitude alarm," He smiled in a friendly way, something Roxas wasn't necessarily used to at this point. He almost expected the guy to punch him with that sweet smile, because that's what most people who approached him had an urge to do, "You got a cigarette I can borrow? A light, too?"

Roxas glanced down at his pocket as a reflex, "How did you know I had a pack on me?"

"I can see it in the side of your jacket, dude. Haven't had a cig in weeks, see? I can fucking _hear_ them calling to me." He looked jittery, "Got one or what?"

"Yeah, yeah, sorry." Roxas would never admit that he was a little freaked out. Whether or not it was just cigarettes, the guy was acting like a total junkie. An escaped circus junkie judging from the hair, "That all?"

"Yes, oh thank God for you. Marlboros. You're an angel." Well, Roxas didn't hear that every day.

"I get that a lot." Roxas almost laughed at the inside joke with himself, realized how stupid that would be, and swallowed it, "I'll light you."

"Thanks so much, man." His voice was muffled by the cigarette in his mouth, "You're a true blue saint." The guy plopped down next to him with a thud that was unnaturally loud for his skin-and-bones body type, "I'm Axel."

"Roxas."

"Roxas. Alright, so what's a delinquent like you doing here with your hood up? Getting your pout on, I see. Or are you running a heist and waiting for the signal to blow us all to bits?"

"I take it you're not into hoodies."

"This is America, kiddo. You look as suspicious as a homeless guy with a large backpack in the middle of the white house." He smiled, crossed his legs and leaned back into his drag.

"Whatever, fashion police." Roxas sighed, took his hood off because for once he didn't feel like fighting.

"Just be thankful it's that kind of police that's scolding you," Another one of those smiles, "So what brings you here?"

"I dunno. Boredom."

"Liar," He said it in a sing-songy voice that made Roxas want to punch the shit out of him, "Lemme guess. You're the creative type?"

"Sure."

"Artist?" Axel sat up more, squinted at him in thought, "No, writer?"

Roxas didn't really feel like keeping up conversation, let alone have to put up with this guy's attempts at it, but he felt obligated somehow. Not like he had anything better to do, "What kind?"

"Hmmm," Axel thought for a moment, "Poetry?"

"Pfft."

"Children's books?"

"Come on."

"Porno scripts."

"Definitely correct. Wow, didn't think you'd get it."

Axel laughed at the reaction he'd gotten, "Alright, but for real? Hmm, I'd say you're an essayist or a journalist of some kind. You seem too serious for fiction or any of that other stuff."

"There are serious authors out there, so your logic is flawed. But yeah, I guess." Roxas sighed, closed his eyes against the wind because the conversation didn't seem like it was gonna really end any time soon.

"Ok, your turn. Guess for me." Axel seemed really goddamn ecstatic. If Roxas had to guess, he'd say it was because of the satisfaction of the cigarette.

"I dunno. Part-time carnie? You've got the hair."

"Close but no cigar." Yeah, it was definitely the cigarettes.

"Serial killer working undercover at the local bowling alley."

Axel thought for a moment, "Colorful but getting colder." His eyes were really green. Like, unnaturally green. Contacts, maybe. Kind of nice.

"Okay...are you an 'artist', too?" Roxas made quotation marks in the air with his fingers.

"Yeah! Okay, what kind?"

"You write scripts for movies." Roxas joked, pulled from his personal experience because he couldn't think of anything else.

"I'm a director," he said, and he stopped smiling, "And you're Roxas the Obnoxious, aren't you?"

Roxas turned and made eye contact, his eyes widening, "Um-"

"I recognized you immediately, kid. I'm Axel Donnelly. The director of the last film you ruined."

Roxas could feel his balls rise into his stomach and stop his digestion system and breath in one go, "Oh, heh. Shit."

Roxas expected a lot of things, the first and foremost on his mind was the likely prospect of getting the ever-loving shit kicked out of him over and over again for at least thirty minutes. What he didn't expect was Axel sighing and taking another drag, patting him on the back and saying, "You're a genius."

"Excuse me?"

"Should've hired you to edit the damn thing. I honestly didn't like the idea, 'redefine the concept of love' was the main focus, but how do you redefine something that goddamn stagnant and unpredictable? But all I know is that I love your blog. You're a smug asshole about everything you do but you make some real solid points. So I see you in the park and I'm like, whoa, get the fuck out; that's the kid. I'm standing over there like a true-to-God fan and then I'm realizing it and I'm like shit, I'm sweating or something, I have to go talk to him. So one thing leads to another and I'm faking cigarette withdrawal so I can sit next to you and give you a pat on the back for your insight. Really good stuff, dude. But if I have any advice for you I'd suggest coming up with a way to express your opinion without being a douche about it. Because you've got true talent, right here, kiddo. True talent." Axel poked Roxas's head and laughed at his shock, "Dumb stuff they make us artist's write about, wouldn't you say? Hey seriously, if you wanna talk movies you should definitely call me. Here's my card."

Roxas didn't really know what to say. He'd never had a fan. Never. Especially not one that he'd ragged on repeatedly through the vast public shitstorm that was the internet.

"Uh, thank you." Roxas said. He would never admit that he was touched. He would _never_ admit that no one had complimented him like this in all his twenty-two years on this planet.

"I also planned out a way to sneak you my number before coming over here. Didn't think you'd be such a looker under that hoodie."

"What?"

"And then I thought, hey, I have a business card. Perfect transition."

"Um-"

"Oh, come on, I promise I'm not as flaming as my hair. Lighten up. Anyway I'll leave you alone before so much blood rushes to your cheeks that you pass out, because I can see the process starting, so give me a ring." Axel smiled, "See ya round."

"Hey wait," Roxas grabbed his sleeve and they both stood up in one fluid movement, "You're not messing with me, are you?"

"Nah, I'm not that smart, as you can see from my movie. I've got others I'd like you to take a look at actually," Roxas accidentally grimaced as a reflex, "Oh, come on blondie, they're not that bad."

"Nothing could be as bad as _Love and be Loved_."

"Agreed." Axel said. Roxas couldn't believe this.

"But thanks for saying this stuff to me I guess. I don't, um, get this sort of reaction a lot." Roxas volunteered, then mentally punched himself.

"You don't have many friends, do you?" Axel smiled a little, but he looked sincere, "When's the last time you had a girlfriend?"

"Okay, you can shut up."

"Just trying to relate to you. I've personally never had a girlfriend."

Roxas looked at him and couldn't stop the smile from creeping onto his lips because he was immature and he knew it, "Why would you tell me you're a virgin?" He laughed in a friendly way. It actually surprised him.

"I didn't," Axel said, and then he kissed Roxas on the forehead. It was quick enough to be chaste, but he got close enough for Roxas to feel the heat of his chest, of his breath, "Anyway, I gotta run. Director things to do. You're a smart guy, Roxas. You're gonna go places someday." And Roxas, ignoring his intensified heart rate, started to believe him. A sort of confirmation bias he never expected to fall for.

Axel walked away and Roxas sat back down on the bench. He put his hoodie back up, hid from the public by looking down, fiddling with his phone.

321-776-5542. Axel Donnelly. Add Contact.


End file.
